


Caging and Freeing Birds

by completelyhopeless



Series: Detective Grayson and Forensic Batgirl [8]
Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Relationship, possibly unrealistic action sequence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:22:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3139241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/completelyhopeless/pseuds/completelyhopeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Barbara tries to keep Jason under control while searching for Dick. Dick deals with flashbacks while trying to find a way to escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Caging and Freeing Birds

**Author's Note:**

> I was stuck on this for a long time. I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn't get it written.
> 
> And I was all proud of the idea I'd worked out for the end part when Dick fights Maroni, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed unfeasible.
> 
> I don't know. I'm not good at action in general, and I don't really know how to write it, and while I kept trying to make sure it made some kind of sense, I don't know that it does. It's probably wrong. Maybe I'll rewrite it again.

* * *

“Talk.”

Jason's gun was to Kowlinski's head this time, and Barbara was trying to tell herself that Dick was right about the kid and that he didn't really want to kill. She didn't put all her hope in that, though. She was still trying to figure out how to get that gun from him without anyone dying. She had training, knew self-defense, but she didn't know that it compared to what Jason had been through as a child.

“You'll pay for this, kid. You have any idea who you're dealing with?”

“A corrupt cop,” Jason answered with another insane smile. “So if you figured I was scared of the idea of killing a cop, you're wrong. You're nothing better than a criminal, and even if you weren't... I'd probably kill you anyway. See, that's what your friend Maroni made me. He made me a killer. He made me a _good_ one.”

Kowlinski did seem to lose a bit of color then, but for a man in his position, it wasn't nearly enough. Barbara didn't think he was scared, or at least not as scared as he should be if he knew what was really going on.

“So here is the deal, pig,” Jason said, taking out a knife and holding it in his other hand. “You're going to tell me everything you know, and when you're done, I'll decide if you get to live.”

“Jason—”

“Look, lady, you're only alive because I think Dick might like you. He's always had a thing for redheads. I could just as soon kill you, too. I don't need to, and maybe you'll be useful later, but right now, you're just annoying me, and if it's not him that gets the bullet, it'll be you.”

Barbara glared at him. She didn't know how much longer she'd be willing to tolerate this kid, even if he was Dick's friend. She didn't know how dangerous he was, and while she did want answers from Kowlinski and was almost willing to let Jason be the one to get them, she didn't think she could. She had to stop him.

“Maroni. Where is he?”

“I'm not scared of you, kid.”

Jason's hand moved faster than she would have expected, like Kowlinski cried out before the knife had cut into him. “That's your first warning. Don't make it your last.”

“I can't tell you anything.”

“He might be telling you the truth,” Barbara said. “He isn't anything more than Maroni's patsy. He used him, but Kowlinski doesn't know enough of what's really going on. If he did, he would be scared of you.”

Jason gave her a look.

“And I think I know how we can find Dick _without_ killing Kowlinski,” she said. That had started out as a bluff, but then she remembered the cameras. Dick made a big deal of them, and they were the only connections between the crimes. She knew it was a stretch, but she might be able to use the disabled cameras to find Dick. “Keep him alive. Maybe we can use him later.”

“Since when is there a 'we,' Red?”

“Since now,” she said, tasing him.

* * *

_“Come on now, Robin,” the man said in Dick's ear, making him sick. He couldn't stand the way that man's breath made him feel, the foul hot air, the words that came with it, the things he was making Dick do. He wanted to go home, but he knew the circus was gone. The man had laughed so much when he told Dick that, told him he was never going back there, that_ this _was all he had, all he would ever have, all he would ever know. He said Dick belonged to him._

_“Stop calling me that,” Dick choked out. “That was my mother's name for me. Not yours. Never yours.”_

_“Oh, my silly little bird. Don't you understand yet? You are mine now. You will always be mine. You're so perfect for this. The acrobatics you can do, the skills you already have from the circus,” the man went on, laughing. Dick hated the way he laughed. That made him feel even sicker than the breath on his neck did._

_“I'm not,” he whispered. “I won't do this. Kill me. I won't do what you want.”_

_“You will, Robin. Just you wait and see.”_

* * *

“Don't _ever_ call me that,” Dick said, dragging himself out of the memories and facing the kid with the sword. “I am not Robin. Not anymore. Not since my mother died.”

The kid's lips curved in disdain, but he said nothing. Dick figured they'd made him stop, though it was hard to be sure. Maroni didn't mind when he talked back, but Jason said that he used to get knocked around hard for opening his mouth. Then again, the things that came out of Jason's mouth would make most people want to hit him.

“You'll always be Robin.”

Dick felt his stomach twist up, trying not to gag. That voice. It always did that to him. He knew it with blood and violence, with things so horrible that his mind continued to block out, but it was the one from his nightmares, the one he wanted to silence forever.

Only he was pretty sure that even if Maroni was dead, his voice would echo in his head in sick, cloying ways. He'd never managed to forget it, even with as much as he _had_ forgotten, locked up and buried in his mind, shut away and never faced because he couldn't handle it.

“You always were the best of them.”

Dick snorted. “You can't say that. If anything, I'm proof your methods don't work. You failed.”

“Are you so sure about that?” Maroni asked. He didn't look at the boy as he came closer, his boots squeaking as he crossed the floor, a sound that shouldn't be familiar—the guy _had_ to have bought new shoes sometime in the last decade—but was and made Dick nauseous all over again. “What if the reason you're not sleeping, why you're so afraid of it, why you don't let yourself give into exhaustion is because you're _afraid_ of it? Afraid of yourself?”

“You're the only bogeyman in this room, Maroni. Or is it Zucco? I can't keep track. You have so many names, and none of them are real.”

Maroni ignored his words as usual. “You'd like to blame the deaths on the boy, wouldn't you? You'd like to go and deny what you are, but what happens in those hours you lose? You always wake ready to fight. Why is that, do you think? Could it be because you were fighting? Because you'd already had a taste for blood while you slept? What if all of those bodies are yours?”

“They're not,” Dick insisted. “I don't sleepwalk, and I don't have those kinds of blackouts.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Stop trying to screw with my head. It won't work. You don't scare me. Maybe you did when I was a kid, but not anymore. You lost a long time ago, and you don't see it, but I do. I am not what you tried to make me. Even Jason isn't what you made him, but I swear I will make you pay for what you did to him. And that kid over there. And any other kid you ever touched.” Dick managed to smile. “You won't get away with any of this. Not this time. I let you live before because I knew you weren't working alone, but I don't need you to find your backers.”

“You don't think so?”

“Nope,” Dick said, laughing. “I just need the kid.”

* * *

“You won't get away with this.”

“Shut up, Kowlinski,” her father growled, and Barbara had to smile. Even in a wheelchair, he was a powerful man, intimidating. Kowlinski glared back at him, but at least this time he wasn't stupid enough to make any kind of crack about cripples. She didn't think he'd make one ever again, but then Kowlinski was not a smart man.

“I can still get the duct tape.”

“No,” her father said, laughing. “I'll handle him. You have enough to worry about with that one on your hands.”

She looked over at where Jason lay, aware that he was starting to come around from the tasing. She knew she had to get them moving again, but she needed Kowlinski somewhere safe, with someone she trusted, and there wasn't a better person to watch over him than her father.

“He'll be fine as long as I can keep him focused on finding Dick,” Barbara said, though she'd added a handgun of her own to her purse and a couple knives hidden in her clothes. She would have felt stupid if this whole thing didn't seem to be getting out of control. “That's what he cares about. His methods might be extreme, but he won't let anything happen to Dick.”

“I hope you're right about that.”

“I am,” she told him, leaning down to kiss his forehead. “I'll be careful. We're just going to go get a closer look at that area where the cameras are down. We might not even find anything.”

“We'd better find something,” Jason muttered from the couch. “Or I will kill you.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” she said, giving her father's shoulder a reassuring squeeze when he frowned at her. She'd be fine. She had half a dozen ways of dealing with Jason if he started getting crazy again, but she figured he'd use most of that crazy on anyone who hurt Dick. She would be fine.

“Barbara,” her father began, and she smiled, knowing what he would say. They both did. He didn't have to finish.

“I'll be back as soon as I can.”

* * *

_“What a pretty little bird you are,” the man said, cooing at him like people did real birds, and Dick flinched, pulling away from him, but he hit the wall and there was nowhere else to go. The man laughed and Dick shuddered, wishing he_ did _have the knife and could throw it because he thought he wanted to kill him. “How do you like your cage?”_

_Dick hated it._

_“You know you're never leaving it, don't you?”_

* * *

“You are very good at bravado. Then again, you always have been.”

Dick shrugged. He wasn't really trying for bravado. He was just trying to stall for time while he tried to find a strategy to get himself out of this mess. He had an idea, but he didn't like it. He wasn't sure he could pull it off. His head still hurt and it wasn't a great plan. It wasn't even that good.

“You shouldn't have come back,” Dick told him. “I never chased you, even after what you did to me. You just keep coming back and making yourself my problem again.”

Maroni laughed. “You belong to me, Robin. You always have. I'll always come back for you.”

“Don't make me vomit.”

Maroni took the last steps he needed to be in place. He didn't see Dick as a threat right now, cuffed as he was, and most people weren't, but most people weren't acrobats. Dick was out of practice, but not as bad as Maroni probably assumed he was. He could manage something. All he had to do was get the right leverage, the right angle.

He kicked out first, predictable but easier than the contortions he'd been contemplating. Maroni stumbled back but didn't fall, and when he moved forward again, Dick caught him between his legs, using them turn Maroni and drop him to the ground. Cursing, the former bogeyman rose again, and Dick braced himself. His head was getting worse, and he thought he was going to puke.

One last try. The worst idea, trying to contort himself like this, but he thought he could manage it if he had to. Maroni got close, and Dick heard a click before a blade stabbed into his side. Maroni pulled the blade out and Dick grit his teeth as he forced himself to move. He grabbed the pillar, pulling himself up, holding his body up with his legs as Maroni leaned in with the blade again.

He twisted, getting his arm up and around Maroni's neck. Maroni turned, trying to get free and throw Dick off, but he used the advantage of the position the cuffs forced his arms into and held Maroni in place, cutting off the other man's air. If he could hold this for long enough, Maroni would lose consciousness.

Dick might lose it first. The concussion was worse, he was bleeding badly, and his legs were strained, not able to hold his weight for much longer.

Maroni went limp, and Dick let him fall. Great. Now his wrists hurt as well as his legs, and he knew he was lucky he hadn't ripped off his own arms with that stunt. He let out a breath, trying to find a more comfortable position. Too bad Maroni's weight hadn't pulled the cuffs free of the pillar.

“Impressive,” the kid said, and Dick looked over to see him holding the sword. “Foolish, but not without... flare.”

“Comes with being in the circus,” Dick muttered, letting his eyes close.


End file.
